The whir and final click of the computer going blank isn’t as comforting as Lillian hoped it would be. Walking briskly upstairs to Tucker’s room, she consoles herself: Never asked for this machine, he can keep it or put it away in the closet or give it to Nadine. Better yet, throw it in the trash. These emails that come out of the blue, they’re too much…can’t be responsible for them anymore, just can’t do it. She walks slower on the way back downstairs to her bedroom. Rose. Nadine. Thomas and Zeke. Tucker. They’re all counting on her. They’re her family—not Rachel Shepherd. Not Henry, not anymore. Besides, she’s doing the right thing, protecting that poor gal. Protecting Henry from disappointing all of them again.
SEVEN
{ October 15, 2000 }
RACHEL SLAPS SHUT THE MEDICINE CABI-net, palms the bottle of sleeping pills and slides it into her robe pocket as Mick swings open the bathroom door. It’s like he’s trying to catch her breaking the promise she made: one month, not a day more. But even with the pills, she wakes up every few hours and presses her abdomen, searching for the painful reminder of her baby girl.
“Good morning,” she says, offering her husband a kiss so he’ll stop staring at her with that are-you-okay look where his thick brows caterpillar together. One month. As if there was a timetable for grief. Ridiculous, how she bargained with Mick. He would hardly ever pop an aspirin, how could he possibly understand?
“Say,” he quips. “The flurry we got last night dumped a ton of snow up in the Poconos. I’ll call and see if that little inn we stayed at last year has a room…” His voice trails off as Rachel attempts to unset the scowl on her face. This isn’t the first time he’s suggested a romantic getaway, implying it’s their one-and-a-half bedroom loft—tiny now, although it used to be cozy—or the noise of the city that’s the source of the tension between them.
“It’s only been—”
“Four weeks. Exactly.”
Rachel looks down, following his gaze to her pocket. Busted. She pulls out the bottle of pills and gives him a sly smile, the kind that used to trump his sternest poker face, have them rolling around in bed, forgetting whatever the hell they were fighting about. “Sorry,” she mumbles, exchanging flirty for humble. “I guess I’m still not ready.”
“All I’m asking is that you try.” Mick turns to leave, adding under his breath, “The least you could do.”
Rachel stands over the toilet bowl, shaking the bottle of pills like dice, but then places them back in the medicine cabinet. A compromise. She steps into the shower for the first time in three days and rotates the knob with extreme effort. What if she could disappear into the steam? She leans her head against the tile, shoulders slumped into a shell, until the hot water’s tapped out. Try. Damn it, try.
A plan, that’s what she needs is a plan. Clearing the clutter out of her bedroom closet is a good start, and then the one in the hall, after that the kitchen cupboards. She’s energized, filling the box marked for Goodwill with things that should have been tossed instead of hidden on shelves out of sight. Mid-morning, she finds herself in front of the closed nursery door, the knob cold and metallic in her hand. A thought pulses in her vacant womb. She should clear out the nursery. Clear it out for good. Instead, she retreats back across the hall, her energy drained.
The apartment is dim with late-afternoon light when Rachel awakens. She runs a hand through snarled curls and her tongue over fuzzy teeth. A groan escapes as she squints at the open bottle of pills on the bedside table, and then remembers the Goodwill box. Hauling everything in the nursery away isn’t the answer, that won’t make things better with Mick. She swings stiff legs over the side of the bed, and then shakes the cotton loose from her brain. This isn’t helping either.
Water, lots of water. She fills a tall glass for the third time at the kitchen sink, her body like a sponge. She flips open her laptop on the counter and scrolls quickly through a handful of emails: Lunch? Meet for coffee? Are you and Mick okay? Ready for a weekend shift? The thought of facing friends or, worse yet, mixing martinis for couples on dates, sends her back to the bedroom. The jumble of sheets and blankets looks so inviting as she pulls on jeans, a cable-knit white sweater and her favorite black high-top sneakers. A short walk in the snow is exactly the thing to snap her awake before Mick comes home. A make-up dinner of fresh pasta and cannoli from Balducci’s, some flowers to brighten up the place. He’ll see she is trying.
The forward motion of walking, soft snow melting against her cheeks, is exhilarating. She strolls right past Balducci’s and the market that has yellow roses year-round. Before long she’s at Rockefeller Plaza, sitting above the ice rink and watching the sun-drenched stage, mothers and nannies with little children scattered around the outer edges. A young girl’s carefree laughter rings out like the bell at recess and Rachel turns to track it. And then, it just fades away. She stuffs her hands deep into the pockets of her down parka, wishing for gloves, fingers searching for the twinge of the still-tender scar. Had Henry Shepherd grieved over losing her, this same way? She hugs her stomach, a wave of queasy fear washing over her. What if one day the pink scar toughens and fades away into nothing at all?
Rachel returns home empty-handed. A dress and mascara, and a reservation at that new sushi place down the street will have to suffice. She stops to get the mail: a few bills, an invitation to a holiday party, and the usual weekly letter addressed only to Mick from Mother O’Shea. P.S. Say hi to your lovely wife. There’s a bubble envelope with a promising heft, no return address. Rachel prods the sticky seal while climbing three flights of stairs, but doesn’t tear it open until she’s behind her apartment door. She sits on the leather couch with her parka still on and pulls out a packet of postcards tied up with brown twine. The note reads: Your dad wrote these but never mailed them. There are more of his things here that you may want to see some day. Hope this helps.
“Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco.” Rachel flips through the cards, fifteen in all, mostly animals and landscapes. How many cards and letters had he written? Sent? Maybe her mom’s deathbed confession that he had called wasn’t just the morphine talking. She remembers Merilee digging up the white tulips her father planted in the front yard; it seemed crazy even to her eight-year-old self. Was it so far-flung that she might also have destroyed letters from him?
She peels off her parka and lays out the pictures like Tarot cards on the coffee table, trying to extract some meaning: two decades, ten countries in Africa and Europe. Always coming home to Kwizera. “Home,” she says aloud. Kwizera was his home for all of those years.
I’m taking photos for a commercial in a spooky old castle on the Rhine River that could be straight out of one of our bedtime stories. You should see it, Cricket.
This is my second week shadowing the mountain gorillas. I sure could use you as an assistant, it gets lonely out here. But I can’t complain. I’m shooting footage for a TV show—just like ol’ Walt Disney!
Not one mention of coming back for her. It’s more like he’s inviting her to visit his new home.
She picks up a postcard of a lion sunning on a rock:
Dear Cricket, it’s funny how I came here searching for one thing and found something totally different. Here’s a bit of wisdom from your old man: It’s the search that really matters. The adventure of living your life. You can quote me on that.
What was her father searching for? And what did he wind up finding that kept him from coming back to her?
Hours later, Rachel startles awake as Mick tosses his coat next to her on the couch. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She glances at the grandfather clock on the mantle: nearly midnight.
“Didn’t want to wake you.” He reaches for a postcard on the coffee table: a field of red roses with a snow-peaked mountain in the background.
“Don’t.” Rachel grabs his wrist, and then quickly lets go.
“They’re obviously in some kind of order. My mistake.”
“No,” Rachel says. “Really, I…” I’m sorry. So damn lame. It
seems like they’re alternately fighting and apologizing lately, with no middle ground. “I want to show you something. This is my father’s life, they’re from him. Actually, from Lillian.”
Her husband sits on couch arm to get a better look.
“He wrote these during the years he lived in Rwanda but never mailed them,” Rachel continues. “I’m not sure why Lillian sent them now. I’d given up on her answering my emails.”
Mick squints at the note accompanying the cards. “May I?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Looks like she’s had a change of heart. Maybe she’s inviting you to visit.”
“Or throwing me a bone so I’ll stop emailing.”
“Why now?” Mick asks, and then answers his own question. “Maybe she wants to use you as bait, to lure her straying husband back home.”
“Or, how about this,” Rachel counters. “She might be trying to get some closure, too.”
Mick picks up the postcard of Mt. Kenya and reads the back. “Impressive.” He picks up another of a silverback gorilla in a tree. “That would be something to see, right? Not like you could go.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rachel bristles. The way he said it, a fact not a question. What if Lillian is inviting her? “Mom left me three thousand dollars. That’s probably enough for plane fare and some time in Rwanda. It can’t be that expensive there.”
“You’re kidding right? It’s not that long since millions of people were slaughtered there. Isn’t it dangerous?”
“No, I mean yes, but…” Rachel shakes her head. It feels more dangerous not to go, to just stay here and pretend her marriage isn’t falling apart. “I’ll be safe at Lillian’s farm.” Mick taps the postcard against his palm, like some weird code she should understand. Rachel raises her eyebrows.
“Nothing.”
“Mick, it’s late. I’m tired.”
“No, why not?” He drops the card on the table and wipes his hand on his pants, as if rejecting something grimy. “Go ahead, risk your life on a wild goose chase to find this shmuck—”
“Hey, he’s my father!”
“Henry messed up, ruined everything with your family. He left because he was, what, bored? Didn’t really want a family? Wasn’t ready?”
“Wait,” Rachel says to her husband’s back as he heads down the hall toward their bedroom. Like hell he’s talking about Henry Shepherd. “Damn it, that’s not fair.”
Mick slams the bedroom door. So much for trying.
THE NEXT MORNING, RACHEL FINDS a note taped to the bathroom mirror: Racquetball. Back after lunch. Love you.
She’s actually relieved Mick’s gone to blow off steam, leaving her with more time alone. She brushes her teeth and splashes water on her face, without a thought of opening the medicine cabinet, and then settles on the couch, computer on one side and her dog on the other. She studies the postcards on the coffee table and chooses a tranquil image of deep green water dotted with giant lavender lilies. On the back, her father wrote: Lake Kivu, the most peaceful place to canoe in the world. “Louie, where do you think Lake Kivu is?” she asks while initiating a Google search. The screen fills with similar images of the lake in northern Rwanda.
“Can you imagine…” She absentmindedly scratches Louie’s ear. How did Henry Shepherd drift here from their suburban Jacksonville home? Peaceful. Did he find what he had gone searching for, at least for a while?
These questions, and so many more, pull Rachel out of bed the following mornings. She can’t bring back her daughter, but it might be possible to rediscover her father—without leaving home. She spends her days wrapped in a fuzzy brown blanket, studying the postcards and writing down thoughts in a notebook, and slowly begins remembering more than just the pain of her father leaving. She also accesses snippets of the times when he was there for her.
On Saturdays, her mom’s beauty parlor date, they would drive to one of the less touristy beaches up the coast with all the windows of his sedan rolled down. She can still taste the citrus-salty breeze. One time, a birthday, he took her on a boat ride in the Everglades. She remembers that his camera nearly fell in the water when a gator emerged right in front of their boat, jaws snapping the air. Asleep on the couch one afternoon, Rachel dreams of sitting at a sidewalk café on a bustling block of Little Havana, drinking spicy hot chocolate and eating Cuban pastries filled with guava and cream cheese. A large Haitian woman with two gold teeth in front who claims to be a gypsy offers to read her father’s palm. When he opens his hand, Rachel snaps awake. Was he planning on leaving for months, maybe years? Or, was it impulsive and unavoidable? Destiny.
Who is Henry Shepherd, really? Mick could be right about him being a carefree travel bum, unable to commit to the responsibilities of a family. But she has to believe there’s more to the story. Over the next few weeks, she becomes consumed with solving the mystery of Henry Shepherd’s life; it’s so much easier than dealing with her own confusing, messed up world. Meanwhile, her husband seems equally content to avoid their problems, their apartment—her—spending long hours at work. They practically float by each other in the hallways, barely touching as they lie side by side in the dark at night. They’re like amiable ghosts sharing the same haunting ground. Tomorrow, Rachel vows silently each night before falling asleep, not exactly tired but fully drained from the energy it takes to avoid her husband and their unspoken grief. Tomorrow we’ll both try harder.
RACHEL SQUINTS TO MAKE OUT her reflection in the smeared subway train window, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Can people see she’s not actually occupying this body? Her first shift since the miscarriage, a short one but it seemed endless. For the past four hours, she’s repeatedly been checking out the mirror behind the bar, putting a hand to her face to make sure she’s smiling. It’s exhausting, the concentration it takes to listen to the drink orders so she doesn’t screw up, the balding man with a sweaty scalp who’s on his third martini complaining about his ungrateful kids, the waitress who must be making a joke because she’s laughing. Damn it, she is trying. But her mind has been at home, studying the postcards from Lillian, jotting down more memories and imaginings about her father in her notebook. When she stops thinking about him, the sorrow of losing Serena oozes in, threatening to carry her away to the dark place where she wants to give up altogether and simply sleep.
The apartment is dark when Rachel arrives home. She follows a slice of light down the hall, and then taps open the door to the nursery. Mick doesn’t look up. He’s sitting on the floor under the window, leaning against Clifford the Big Red Dog. Chunky books still line the shelves, the walls are still Bumblebee Yellow, and the crib is still decked out in “Goodnight Moon” themed soft bumpers and pillows. And yet, this room feels totally different without the promise of a baby. Empty.
“Hey,” Rachel says. Mick barely nods. He’s examining a plush cow jumping over a Swiss cheese moon, staring at the mobile as if it’s broken. Rachel slides down next to him, takes the mobile and winds it. She tilts her head onto his shoulder as a bright, tinny version of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star begins to play. They listened to this song over and over, pasting Day-Glo stars on the ceiling above the crib. “What’re you thinking about?” she says, wanting so badly for Mick to hold her, not knowing how to ask anymore. She doesn’t want to have to ask.
He pats her shoulder and then removes his hand to rewind the mobile. Rachel inches away. He doesn’t know how anymore, either. “It’ll get better,” she says, mimicking the calm resolve of a nurse. “We just need to give it some time—both of us.”
Mick looks at her, his face gray in the dim light. “How much time, Ray? A few months more? A year?”
“We’ll try again.”
“When?”
Several sentences line up in Rachel’s throat. We’ll try again, as soon as the doctor gives the green light. Next time, everything will go smoothly. Next time.
“That money from your mom?” Mick prods. “We could use it for another round of IVF. Or,
there’s always adoption.”
“No,” Rachel says, too loudly, and then softer, “First, I need to know more about my father. I emailed Lillian again to ask if I can come visit.” Mick stands abruptly and grips the side of the crib, turning away from her. “We could both go, an adventure,” she rushes on, the words spilling out. “This trip could change everything.”
“The danger aside, you’re setting yourself up for huge disappointment if Henry doesn’t show up. Come on, Ray, admit it. That’s what you’re hoping for.”
“You’re wrong,” she says. “I don’t expect him to show up for me—not anymore. What I’m hoping for is someone to answer my questions.” Someone who might reassure her that Merilee was right: Henry Shepherd loved her the best he could, but didn’t have it in him to be a good father. He was the one who was broken—not her.
Mick pounds his palm against the rail, as if trying to jostle loose words. Rachel gets up and smoothes a hand down his spine. “I need to do this for us, not for him,” she says. “Get some closure. Before we try again. You get that, right?”
“I can see,” he says slowly, “it’s got to be rough. The shots and mood swings, the doctors poking and promising, the waiting.”
“Yes, yes, exactly.”
“And then things can still go wrong.”
“And then, even more can go wrong after the baby’s born.”
“You’re scared.”
“I want to make sure—”
In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills Page 6